With Friends Like David Shuster…

Over the weekend Current TV’s feisty substitute anchor David Shuster took a caveman’s club to the Fox News commentators who moderated the most recent GOP presidential debate. He aired his grievances on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” in a tirade he says wasn’t meant to be angry even though the shouting blasting from the TV sounded like he was trying out for The McLaughlin Group. “If I need to smile more, I’ll take that critique and work on it,” the Emmy-award winning anchor told FishbowlDC in an email interview this week, punctuating his sentence with a smiley emoticon.

But even more striking than Shuster’s sharp jabs at Fox News anchors Megyn Kelly, Bret Baier and Chris Wallace was what came long before he dismissed them as idiots. “I still have a lot of friends there [at Fox News], too” he made a special point of saying when host Howard Kurtz announced that he once worked at the network.

Shuster said his comments stemmed from recent conversations he’d had with those “friends” at Fox News. “Speaking to a few of them on Friday/Saturday is what inspired me, in part, to bring up Brett [sic] and Megyn on Sunday. Several people in the Fox DC bureau were embarrassed by some of the questions in the debate. Furthermore, there seems to be a strong sense that Fox News has lost a lot of credibility/watchability with Brit Hume’s semi-retirement.”

Fox News PR did not return a request for comment.

But a “Friend of Fox” told FBDC, “He may be right about Megyn but not about Brett. Ratings wise Brett does better than Brit did. Of course, Brit has been around Washington for a long time and has a great deal of institutional knowledge. But Brett will get that. Megyn seems to talk to pundits more than newsmakers, that hurts.”

But are Shuster’s attacks credible? “I think David Shuster is a hack who went over to MSNBC and sold whatever credentials he had in order to get a job over there. So my guess is a lot of this is sour grapes,” said right-wing radio host Mark Levin, who is based in an undisclosed location in the Washington area, possibly a bunker. “But he has ceased being a journalist in my eyes long ago, so who cares what thinks about Fox or anyone else?”

Others also sense the irony of a Shuster critique on Fox News. “It’s kind of funny that a guy who was fired for a lack of credibility and honesty with his former employer at MSNBC would feel comfortable commenting on the credibility of others. But a lack of credibility and self-awareness have always been Shuster’s calling card,” said TownHall columnist and WMAL radio host Derek Hunter. “He’s a perfect fit for Current TV – no one cares what he thinks and no one watches that network. It’s a match made in wherever matches no one gives a damn about are made.”

Jeff Poor, TV writer for The Daily Caller, said “Shuster has been going around talking down Fox News and how he has inside info for a few months — since he had the leash taken off after departing MSNBC.” Poor’s referencing Shuster’s recent call for FNC’s Bill Sammon’s firing. “I mean, take that for what it’s worth as far as his motivations for attacking Fox News – a [guy with an] association to MMFA and fill-in host for Keith Olbermann.”

In the days following Shuster’s fiery performance on “Reliable Sources,” press hits began rolling in. Both favorable and damning. While HuffPost reported a straightforward account of what happened on CNN (Shuster praised them for it on Twitter), BigGov tweaked him, calling him “barely employed” in a banner-like headline.